With global warming likely to create long-term drier conditions here in the Northwest, we can probably expect to see slow trends away from water-intensive cash-crop human chow like sweet corn and towards towards less lucrative, but less thirsty crops.

Agaves are often mistakenly classed as cacti, leading many people to refer to tequila as "a drink made from cactus", but while both agave and cacti species thrive in drier, more arid conditions, agaves are botanically unrelated to their thorny bedfellows.

The pair have not long gone down the narrow stairs when a waggon stops outside in the lane, and up comes the carter to speak with the 'drier' -- the giant trampling round in the pocket -- and to see how the hops 'be getting on.'